Ireland ’denies right to education’

Families in Ireland say children are being denied their basic right to an education because of a chronic shortage of special needs places.

Parents complain of a lack of places in special schools and mainstream settings for children with autism.

Linda Comerford, whose group Enough is Enough is campaigning for more special needs classes in Ireland

Campaigners say in some cases five and six-year-olds are kept in pre-schools because there are no primary school places available.

Further, families face a struggle to find secondary school places for those leaving primaries.

Campaign group demands better support

Linda Comerford leads campaign group Enough is Enough – Every Vote Counts, which demands better support for children and adults with disabilities. Her children Michael, 17, Shauna, five, and Franky, three, all have special needs.

Comerford said there are shortages across Ireland, with black spots in parts of Dublin, Cork and Kildare.

“We have parents who have applied to up to 30 or more schools and cannot get a place for their child,” she said.

More staff training needed

Staff training in Ireland’s autism classes in mainstream schools must also improve, she said.

“At the moment you could have an autism-specific class, but you could have a teacher who is teaching that class who has absolutely no training in autism whatsoever.”

In February, Autism Eye told how Ian Diamond and wife Josie approached 26 Dublin schools in a fruitless attempt to find a class for five-year-old son Dylan.

Joe McHugh is Ireland’s minister for education.

Special needs classes more than double

He said that since 2011 the number of special needs classes has increased from 548 to 1,459.

Almost 1,200 of these are autism classes, said McHugh.

The minister said work is ongoing to ensure that the country can offer each child a place this September.

But he warned that under Ireland’s new Education Act 2018 he can force schools to offer special needs classes.